[-empyre-] mediation & videogames / the screen as a place of activity in the battlefield

[sdv at krokodile.co.uk]

The thin computing screen currently uses 5% of the energy resources of 
the planet, and in the average Western European household currently 
consumes 15% of the energy purchased. Is it possible to separate  the 
image from the resources used to produce it. The proposition that the 
'process of mediation is an abstraction of the world' is surely not 
sustainable as an interrogation even of the present, let alone in the  
medium term simply because of the conflict between resources and the 
finitude of the planet.

sdv

Gabriel Menotti wrote:
> Dear all:
>
> Since we are approaching the end of this first week, we should start
> pondering about the thickness of the screen from the other
> perspective: as referring not to the technical space that produces the
> image, but to the real space contained within it. In what measure the
> process of mediation is an abstraction of the world, as much as an
> abstraction of technologies?
>
> Of course, it is precisely in the balance between both aspects that
> the thickness of the screen shows its highest political implications.
> It seems to me that Jonathon Kirk illustrates this very well in his
> video 'I've Got a Guy Running',[1] using graphic filters to create
> (further) distance from surveillance images (originally intended to
> get things closer - literally under scope).
>
> A recent article in salon.com also brings about the suble cultural
> dimension involved in  adopting screens as places of activity /in the
> world/. In an (expected?) reversal of the old "videogames makes people
> violent" polemics, the military forces are using the apparently
> non-violent interface of hi-tech weaponry as an appeal to convince
> people to enlist. "Join the armed forces, the ads suggest, and you
> don't have to experience the blood-and-guts consequences of combat.
> Instead, you get to hang out stateside, entertaining yourself with a
> glorified PlayStation." [1]
>
> Baudrillard aside, what is exactly being abstracted (i.e. supressed)
> in all these situations?
>
> Best!
> Menotti
>
> [1] http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/08/29/military_marketing/
> [2] http://www.ux1.eiu.edu/~jjkirk/running_excerpt2.mov
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